Élise Turcotte is a novelist and award-winning poet who has received the Prix Emile Nelligan for La terre est ici in 1989 and for La voix de Carla in 1987. In 1992, she won the Prix Louis-Hémon for Le bruit des choses vivantes. Her novel The Alien House was shortlisted for the 2004 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation. Élise lives in Montreal, where she has taught at the CEGEP de Vieux-Montréal since 1986.